Dihydroxyacetone production in an engineered Escherichia coli through expression of Corynebacterium glutamicum dihydroxyacetone phosphate dephosphorylase

Dihydroxyacetone production in an engineered Escherichia coli through expression of Corynebacterium glutamicum dihydroxyacetone phosphate dephosphorylase

Enzyme and Microbial Technology

10.1016/j.enzmictec.2016.01.015

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enzmictec.2016.01.015

Vishist Kumar Jain, Crystal Jing Ying Tear, Chan Yuen Lim

01 February 2016

Jain, V. K.; Tear, C. J. Y.; Lim, C. Y., Dihydroxyacetone production in an engineered Escherichia coli through expression of Corynebacterium glutamicum dihydroxyacetone phosphate dephosphorylase. Enzyme and Microbial Technology 2016, 86, 39-44.

Dihydroxyacetone (DHA) has several industrial applications such as a tanning agent in tanning lotions in the cosmetic industry; its production via microbial fermentation would present a more sustainable option for the future. Here we genetically engineered Escherichia coli (E. coli) for DHA production from glucose. Deletion of E. coli triose phosphate isomerase (tpiA) gene was carried out to accumulate dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP), for use as the main intermediate or precursor for DHA production. The accumulated DHAP was then converted to DHA through the heterologous expression of Corynebacterium glutamicum DHAP dephosphorylase (cghdpA) gene. To conserve DHAP exclusively for DHA production we removed methylglyoxal synthase (mgsA) gene in the ΔtpiA strain. This drastically improved DHA production from 0.83 g/l (0.06 g DHA/g glucose) in the ΔtpiA strain bearing cghdpA to 5.84 g/l (0.41 g DHA/g glucose) in the ΔtpiAΔmgsA double mutant containing the same gene. To limit the conversion of intracellular DHA to glycerol, glycerol dehydrogenase (gldA) gene was further knocked out resulting in a ΔtpiAΔmgsAΔgldA triple mutant. This triple mutant expressing the cghdpA gene produced 6.60 g/l of DHA at 87% of the maximum theoretical yield. In summary, we demonstrated an efficient system for DHA production in genetically engineered E. coli strain.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

This work was supported by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A-STAR), ICES/12-174A01.

https://oar.a-star.edu.sg/communities-collections/articles/13699

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